The vast majority of suburban houses and many urban houses in the United States have yards covered with grass. These grass yards or lawns must be mowed on a regular basis to keep the grass at a desirable height. Furthermore, commercial property, parks, golf courses and other maintained property is often covered with grass. Currently, most lawns and maintained properties are mowed using gasoline or electric powered lawn mowers, riding mowers or lawn tractors which include spinning steel blades. The owner, or someone hired by the owner, either pushes or rides the mowers across the lawn to cut the grass, which is a time consuming process. In addition, the use of gasoline powered lawnmowers uses a significant amount of fossil fuels and releases carbon dioxide and pollutants into the atmosphere.
Recently, lawn mowing devices have been developed which use lasers to cut grass. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,269,617 discloses a lawn cutting device in which a lawn tractor or lawn mower is fitted with an apparatus which uses lasers to cut the grass. While this design eliminates the rotating steel blade, it still requires the operator to push or ride the mower across the lawn which is a time consuming process.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,952,222 and 6,374,584 also disclose laser devices for cutting grass which include a mower which must be moved across the lawn by a person. In each of these prior art references, significant time and effort must be expended to cut the lawn.
A device is needed which will allow a land owner to automatically and effortlessly cut the grass on a lawn using lasers without having to utilize a lawn mower, riding mower or lawn tractor.
A device is also needed which will allow a land owner to cut the grass in a manner which causes less pollution and uses less energy.